Six Month Recap!

Six months quit!! I hope you guys don't mind the long post. I thought I would share with you guys some of my thoughts and experiences of the last little while, maybe to help motivate some of the new quitters out there, or to just help some others pass a little bit of time.I still have a hard time believing that I've made it all the way to 6 months... Back in Feb when I started this quit, I had a hard enough time thinking about making it to 6 days, or 6 weeks, let alone half a year. This is by far the longest quit I have ever sustained, and hopefully will be the only quit I will ever need to sustain again.A huge thank you to everyone on this board, for your support, your posts, your congratulations. You guys were a huge motivation for me to keep the quit. Not one puff, ever!To all you newbies, if I can do this, so can you. I was so addicted. I associated EVERYTHING I did day to day with having a cigarette. During those first couple of days of my quit, I thought about smoking all the time, as in every minute. For weeks I would "cheat" by walking myself through clouds of other people's second hand smoke (disgusting huh?). I would go off on a daze all the time at work, multiple trips to the water cooler, rest room, long looks out the window, anything to try and take my mind off of smoking. At home I cooked up a storm, cleaned up a storm, don't think our kitchen had ever been so spotless. I think the major turning point of my quit was about 4 weeks or so in. I remember driving home with my wife, suffering this massive crave all the way back, getting to our parking lot and spending 5 minutes with her talking about how I was gonna drive out to the convenience store right now to pick up a pack, it's okay, I'm just gonna have the one now, and will save the rest for only when I really need to have one again. I had actually put my car back into gear to drive out of the parking lot when she said to me, "No sweetie, you're doing so good, you don't need to do this. Let's just go back in." I heard that, grit my teeth, put my car back into park,Herbal cigarettes, shut it off, and ran inside to sulk. Haven't looked back since. After that, slowly but surely, the difficulties started to fade away. I began noticing huge periods of time where I wouldn't even think about smoking. Sometimes my biggest craves, like after meals, wouldn't even register in my head until an hour or more afterwards. Even when the craves came they were super easy to fight off, as in 10 seconds and it was off my mind. Other people's second hand smoke wasn't so great any more. I would see friends smoke and not even think about wanting a smoke myself. I could even sit there, think about a cigarette, and not even crave for it. Day by day, it started to get easier and easier.I know now that if I had gone out that night to buy that pack, I would still be smoking away. To make the quit happen, and I'm sure this applies to everyone out there, it's all about the battles you're forced to fight on a day to day, hour to hour, or minute to minute basis with your craves. You need to keep fighting them, no matter how little, or how big, or how frequent. Take them on one at a time, beat them down, and move on to the next one. Each time you do it, you get a little stronger, and the quit becomes a little easier. As time goes on, the battles start getting further and further apart. I realized just this morning that I didn't even think about cigarettes at all yesterday, not a single crave. I don't even know when the last time was I had gone a whole day without thinking about cigarettes, probably before I had started smoking. Even when I did think about it this morning it was because I was reflecting on my six month quit,smoking cessation, and not because I was actually craving a cigarette. That's when I thought I would write a post here, to share with everyone some of my experiences this last little while, and hopefully provide some motivation to someone that THIS IS POSSIBLE!!Thanks for reading everyone. Onwards to the one year push.